February 8, 2025 • 37 mins
This 2021 episode covers the Chinese Exclusion Act, the United States’ first major immigration law. As its name suggests it specifically targeted people from China, and it led to Supreme Court cases that set the stage for later restrictions.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. Coming up, we have an episode that's related
to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the history of immigration
from China to the United States. We've talked about a
lot of the background and context for this before on
a number of different episodes, including the one on the
US Supreme Court decision in Chai Chong Ping versus the
(00:23):
United States.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
This episode came out on April nineteenth, twenty twenty one,
and it is two days Saturday Classic Welcome to Stuff
You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Hello, and Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
We've gotten several requests to do an episode on the
Chinese Exclusion Act of eighteen eighty two, and that's something
that we've mentioned in I feel like a lot of
previous episodes, and it's gotten a longer discussion in some
specific episodes like the Delano Grape Strike and Cannery Row
and our Brief History of Foreign Foods in the US,
(01:09):
and then especially our two parter on Executive Order ninety
sixty six in the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during
World War Two.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
So the Chinese.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Exclusion Act was really the first big piece in just
a long history of United States immigration laws, intended to
keep so called undesirables out of the country and to
maintain white racial purity. It was the United States first
major immigration law, and as its name suggests, it specifically
(01:40):
targeted people from China. It made it illegal for Chinese
laborers to enter the US for ten years, and then
it was extended under the Geary Act in eighteen ninety
two and then made permanent in nineteen o two. It
wasn't repealed until nineteen forty three. That was under the
Magnuson Act, although that act also set a quote on
(02:00):
Chinese immigration that worked out to a maximum of just
about one hundred and five people a year, so not
many at all. But the Chinese Exclusion Act also had
a much broader impact beyond its exclusion of Chinese immigrants
and beyond its setting the foundation for later laws that
targeted other groups. When it was challenged before the Supreme Court,
(02:22):
the court's decisions established what's known as the plenary power
doctrine for immigration law. Basically, that's the idea that the
US government's legislative and executive branches have virtually unlimited authority
to regulate immigration without a lot of oversight from the courts,
even if those same regulations would be considered discriminatory if
(02:43):
they were applied to US citizens. So today we are
going to talk about the Chinese Exclusion Act. We're also
going to talk about the Supreme Court case that's most
closely associated with all this, and that is Chai Chan
Ping versus the United States.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
For the most part, immigration in the US from China
started after the end of the First Opium War. Briefly,
Britain wanted to import Chinese goods like tea and silk,
but China didn't really have a need for Britain's usual exports,
so to offset that imbalance, Britain started trading opium from
India into Southern China. Opium, of course, is a highly
(03:22):
addictive narcotic, and although it had been introduced into China
before this point, the British opium trade was socially and
economically devastating. The emperors started issuing edicts against opium in
seventeen twenty nine, but Britain kept exporting it into China
in defiance of Chinese law. Eventually, China destroyed a shipment
(03:43):
of British opium by throwing it into the sea, and
Britain retaliated with force. The resulting war lasted from eighteen
thirty nine to eighteen forty two, and it ended with
the Treaty of Nanjing, which heavily favored British interests. Although
the US had all also been involved in the opium trade,
it wasn't one of the belligerents in this war, so
(04:04):
it was not a party to the Treaty of Nanjing.
But the US did want access to the same trading
ports and other concessions that Britain had secured through that treaty,
so US President John Tyler sent a delegation to China
in eighteen forty four, and the result was the Treaty
of wan Hia, which was described as a Treaty of quote, Peace, amity,
(04:26):
and commerce. It called for a quote perfect, permanent and
universal peace and a sincere and cordial amity between the
US and China. It was the first diplomatic agreement between
the US and China, and although it primarily covered US
trading rights with China, it also established the right for
Americans to live in five specific Chinese ports. The Treaties
(04:49):
of Nanjing and wan Chia are two of the unequal
treaties that China signed with other nations in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. These treaties heavily favored the interests
of other nations over those of China. China had strictly
limited its trade and its contact with other nations before
this point, and so it went through just massive and
(05:10):
tumultuous social and economic changes as a result of these
treaties and the concessions that they granted to other nations.
On top of that, the Taiping Rebellion was partially fueled
by this upheaval and dissatisfaction over these new foreign influences
in China. It started in eighteen fifty and led to
the deaths of more than twenty million people. Then, unresolved
(05:34):
issues from the First Opium War fed into the Second
Opium War that started in eighteen fifty six. There were
massive floods and famines in China in the mid nineteenth
century as well.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
In the wake of all this violence and chaos and destruction,
people understandably started emigrating from China to other countries, and
while some people were able to pay their own way,
others were essentially indentured workers, or in some cases, were
the victims of trafficking. During these same years, the United
States needed a new source for laborers, especially in California.
(06:09):
The US took possession of nearly all of what is
now California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico after the
end of the Mexican American War in eighteen forty eight.
That same year, the discovery of gold launched the California
Gold Rush, So the US needed people to farm this
newly acquired land, to mine gold, to build infrastructure, just
(06:31):
on and on.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
They needed people.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, and just from a practical but also unpleasant level,
people were going to have to come from somewhere else.
The indigenous population of California is estimated to have been
at about one hundred and fifty thousand people at the
end of the Mexican American War, and they faced disease,
the loss of land, and genocide at the hands of
(06:54):
white settlers in the California government over the following decades.
And although some newcomers to Cali, California did bring their
enslaved workforces with them. When California was admitted to the
Union in eighteen fifty it was as a free state,
so the United States was just needing to bring in
workers from some other source. One of the people proposing
(07:15):
that these new laborers come from China was Aaron Haate
Palmer his memoir Geographical, Political, and Commercial On the present state,
productive Resources and Capabilities for Commerce of Siberia, Manchuria, and
the Asiatic Islands of the Northern Pacific Ocean, and on
the importance of opening commercial intercourse with those countries we
(07:36):
love A long title. That book was addressed to President
James K. Polk in eighteen forty eight. In addition to
summarizing quote, the present state, productive resources and capabilities for
commerce of several comparatively unknown countries in the East, the
eighth chapter of this work was titled quote Policy of
Encouraging Immigration of Chinese Agricultural Laborers to California semi colon
(08:02):
railroad from the Mississippi to the Bay of San Francisco.
This chapter began quote with the view of bringing the
fertile lands in California under early cultivation. I would suggest
the policy of encouraging immigration of agricultural laborers from China
to that territory. No people in all the East are
so well adapted for clearing wild lands and raising every
(08:25):
species of agricultural product, especially rice, cotton, tobacco, sugar, and
silk as the Chinese. Palmer goes on to describe how
a colony of Chinese laborers in California would also bring
in trade from China and from other parts of Asia.
He also advocates the construction of a railroad connecting the
Mississippi River to San Francisco, which would connect the eastern
(08:48):
US to the West coast for trade with Asia. The
United States would undertake such a railroad under the Pacific
Railway Act, which was signed into law in eighteen sixty two.
As a side here, Palmer would also go on to
draft such documents as Plan for Opening Japan, which formed
the foundation for commodore Matthew Perry's voyage to open Japan
(09:10):
to Western trade by force. Palmer petitioned Congress for compensation
and recognition for his work. He was apparently very annoyed
that he had not been recognized or paid for all
of this. That led to an Act for the Relief
of Aaron H. Palmer in eighteen sixty one, and under
that act he was paid three thousand dollars. In the
(09:32):
wake of all this, the number of Chinese people living
in the US rose dramatically. In eighteen forty, there were
four people of Chinese origin known to be living in
the United States. In eighteen fifty, there were just over
four thousand, but by eighteen sixty that number had grown
to almost thirty five thousand. That's a big number in
it sounds like a huge increase, and it is, but
(09:54):
it's still tiny compared to the total US population of
thirty one million people at the time. So at the
national level, looking at things from the federal government's perspective,
these were desperately needed, relatively inexpensive workers who were doing
critical manual labor. Some of that labor was incredibly difficult, unpleasant,
and dangerous. That was especially true as Chinese workers started
(10:18):
building the Transcontinental Railroad. They made up between eighty and
ninety percent of the workforce on the railroad's western portion.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
But locally, white people in the Western US, especially in California,
saw Chinese immigrants as a threat. This was especially true
during the Gold Rush, as white miners tried to exclude
Chinese people from mining camps and prevent Chinese people from
staking claims. Basically, as soon as Chinese immigrants started branching
(10:47):
out beyond doing manual labor, white people resisted. We will
get into more about that. After a quick sponsor break
during the eighteen fifties and sixties, the state of California
(11:07):
started really trying to discourage immigration from China and to
place restrictions on Chinese people who were already in the state.
In eighteen fifty four, the California Supreme Court issued its
decision in People Versus Hall, which ruled that Chinese people
could not testify against white people in court. The language
(11:27):
of the court's ruling was explicitly racist, including describing Chinese
people as inferior. In eighteen fifty eight, California passed a
law that barred Chinese and Mongolian people from entering the state,
where generally there were also just the same kinds of
discriminatory segregation laws that we've seen in other contexts, and
laws that were just applied only to the Chinese population
(11:50):
and not to everyone else. At the same time, the
United States was signing new treaties with China. In eighteen
fifty eight, the US and China signed the Treaty of
Chen which supplemented and revised the Treaty of Juan Chia.
The Treaty of Tianjin again emphasized this idea of establishing
a quote firm, lasting, and sincere friendship between the two nations.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
The Treaties of Tianjin and Wan Chia both outlined various
rights and protections for American citizens who were living in China,
but they didn't really do the same for Chinese citizens
who were living in the United States, or really mentioned
Chinese immigration to the US at all. That changed with
the Berlin Game Seward Treaty of eighteen sixty eight that
(12:36):
was named for US Minister to China andson Burlingame, who
had started working directly for the Chinese government, and for
Secretary of State William Seward. In addition to again reiterating
and expanding American trading rights with China, this treaty also
specified that both Chinese and American citizens had a quote
inherent and unalienable right to change their home and allegiance.
(13:00):
In other words, Americans could immigrate to China and Chinese
people could immigrate to the US without restriction. At the
same time, quote nothing herein contained shall be held to
confer naturalization upon citizens of the US in China, nor
upon the subjects of China in the United States. US
citizens could also enjoy all the privileges of a public
(13:23):
education under control of the Chinese government, and Chinese citizens
could do the same in the US. Chinese and American
citizens were each allowed to establish their own schools in
the other country as well. But even as the federal
government was establishing this pretty unrestricted right to emigrate between
China and the United States, discrimination against Chinese people already
(13:47):
in the United States was really increasing. The same types
of racist stereotyping that had been used to justify slavery
was used to justify discrimination and violence against Chinese immigrants.
Men were described as being useful only for manual labor,
while Chinese women were cast as sex workers. Compounding all
(14:08):
of this were perceptions that Chinese people would work for
such low wages that they made it impossible for white
people to compete. Employers also started bringing in Chinese workers
to break strikes, and that drew the ire of the
workers they were replacing and the unions that represented them,
and the language used to describe Chinese workers often carried
(14:30):
a connotation of damage and destruction. These immigrants were described
as an invasion, or a flood, or a deluge, or
even a plague of locusts. The idea was that once
the railroad was finished, or the mine was played out,
or the crop was brought in, then these workers would
swarm into another area and destroy everything in their path.
(14:51):
This was worsened by the Panic of eighteen seventy three,
which kicked off a financial depression and also led to
increased competition for fewer and fewer jobs. White communities and
business leaders along the West Coast, especially in California, started
pressing the federal government to take action against this supposed
Chinese threat. In eighteen seventy five, less than a decade
(15:15):
after signing the Berlin Game Treaty, the federal government responded
to this with the Page Act.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
The Page Act barred US citizens from bringing quote any
subject of China, Japan, or any Oriental country into the
US without their free and voluntary consent. In other words,
it banned Americans from bringing indentured or otherwise unfree workers
to the US from these countries. Section three of the
Page Act also began quote the importation into the United
(15:44):
States of women for the purposes of prostitution is hereby forbidden,
and it empowered port collectors to inspect vessels and their
passengers to confirm that this law was being followed.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
The Page Act essentially assumed that Asian women immigrating to
the US world sex workers, and it subjected them to
degrading and humiliating exams and interrogations upon arrival. Before this point,
Chinese immigrants to the US had been predominantly male, since
so many were being contracted to work as manual laborers.
(16:18):
But the Page Act became an even bigger deterrent for women,
and it reinforced stereotypes that connected Asian women to sex work.
Combined with a rise in anti miscegenation laws which made
it illegal for people of different races to marry, this
meant that the vast majority of Chinese people in the
US were single men or men whose families were back
(16:39):
in China. Was basically a deterrent to forming actual families
and communities here in the US. We talked about some
similar stuff in our Delano Grape Strike episode with Filipino
workers who were not permitted to have wives or to
bring their wives from the Philippines. Yeah eighteen seventy five
(17:02):
was also the year that Chai chan Ping arrived in
the US to work, and he worked in the United
States for the next twelve years, and during those years,
the US continued to pass new restrictions on immigration from
China and other parts of Asia, and on Chinese immigrants
already in the country. California adopted a new state constitution
in eighteen seventy nine, which included Article nineteen. It was
(17:25):
simply called Chinese. Section two of this article began, quote,
no corporation, now existing or hereafter formed under the laws
of this State shall, after the adoption of this Constitution, employed,
directly or indirectly, in any capacity any Chinese or Mongolian.
Section three reads in its entirety quote no Chinese shall
(17:48):
be employed on any state, county, municipal, or other public work,
except in punishment for crime. Also in eighteen seventy nine,
the US Senate and House asked a bill that mandated
that ships arriving in the United States could carry no
more than fifteen Chinese workers. President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed
(18:10):
this bill because it conflicted with the treaties in place
with China, including the Berlin Game Treaty, but then to
address that he sent a commission to China, headed by
diplomat James Angel, to negotiate a new treaty, and the
result of that negotiation was the Angel Treaty, signed in
eighteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
The Angel Treaty was written to apply only to laborers,
although the definition of laborer expanded over time. It read
in part quote, Whenever, in the opinion of the Government
of the United States, the coming of Chinese laborers to
the United States or their residents therein effects or threatens
to affect the interests of that country, or to endanger
(18:50):
the good order of the said country, or of any
locality within the territory thereof, the Government of China agrees
that the Government of the United States may regulate, limit,
or suspend such coming or residence, but may not absolutely
prohibit it. This treaty's second article declared that quote Chinese subjects,
(19:11):
whether proceeding to the United States as teachers, students, merchants,
or from curiosity, together with their body and household servants
and Chinese laborers, who are now in the United States,
shall be allowed to go and come of their own
free will and accord, and shall be accorded all the
rights privileges, immunities, and exemptions which are accorded to the
(19:33):
citizens and.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Subjects of the most favored nation. However, just two years
after signing the Angel Treaty, the United States passed the
Chinese Exclusion Act, or as it was formally known, an
Act to execute certain Treaty stipulations relating to Chinese. It
banned Chinese laborers from coming to the US for ten years,
(19:55):
and it defined laborers as quote both skilled and unskilled
laborers and Chinese employed in mining. And it also included
this clause, no state court or court of the United
States shall admit Chinese to citizenship. Now, you could make
the argument that because this applied only to laborers, it
(20:18):
was not absolutely prohibiting people from coming from China to
the United States, which is like the Angel Treaty had
said that the US could limit but not absolutely prohibit.
That's still kind of like well, technically level of argument.
This Act did not apply to Chinese people who were
already in the US before the Angel Treaty was signed,
(20:40):
or to people who arrived within ninety days of the
passage of the Exclusion Act, at least in terms of
the ability to come and go. The fact that they
then could not become citizens. That applied to everyone, and
this established a process to take place at American ports
which would document the right of these people who you know,
were exempt under this part of the treaty to come
(21:01):
and go. The customs collector would document all Chinese passengers
on departing vessels, and then these passengers were entitled to
receive a certificate that would quote entitle the Chinese laborer
to whom the same is issued to return to and
re enter the United States, upon producing and delivering the
same to the Collector of Customs of the district at
(21:24):
which such Chinese laborer shall seek to re enter. So basically,
if you're already here, you were supposed to be able
to come and go. You could return to China or
go somewhere else and then come back in the United States.
In practice, this act banned virtually all immigration to the
US from China, and it also sparked a massive amount
of horrific anti Chinese violence in the US. There had
(21:48):
been mass anti Chinese violence before this point. As one example,
on October twenty fourth, eighteen seventy one, a white man
was killed during a shootout involving several Chinese men, and
in retaliation, a white mob attacked the Chinese community of
Los Angeles, lynching at least seventeen people. But after the
Exclusion Act was passed, White communities on the West Coast
(22:11):
felt empowered to purge their Chinese populations, and they subjected
Chinese neighborhoods to riots and other mass violence. Multiple cities
and towns expelled their entire Chinese population, including Tacoma, Washington,
which force marched its remaining Chinese residents out of town
on November third, eighteen eighty five. At least twenty eight
(22:34):
Chinese men were massacred in Rock Springs, Wyoming, on September
thirtieth of eighteen eighty five. This whole period came to
be known as the Driving Out, and it really had
a lot of similarities to the mass violence against black
communities that we've talked about in previous episodes, including our
episode on the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen. There was
(22:55):
a widespread perception outside of the Chinese community that Chinese
immigrants were ignorant and illiterate, but really the Chinese immigrant
community in the US was deeply interconnected, organized, and legally
very savvy. Chinese benevolent and mutual aid associations had started
to form in the US almost as soon as Chinese
(23:16):
immigrants had started arriving. In eighteen eighty two, the sixth
most powerful formed the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, also known
as the Chinese Six Companies. Its leadership included Chinese merchants
and other wealthy and prominent people, and it kept attorneys
on retainer to deal with legal issues that involved Chinese immigrants,
(23:38):
so did the Chinese Consulate. This led to a huge
number of court cases as people started arriving from China
and to the United States without that certificate that was
described under the Chinese Exclusion Act that would guarantee them
the right to return. In some cases, this was because
they were really newer rivals. They hadn't been in the
(23:58):
United States before. There were plenty of reasons that people
might really be returning to the US having left previously,
but without the right paperwork to prove that they had
previously been in the country. They could have left the
United States before the Exclusion Act was passed, at which
point no such certificates were being issued, or they just
(24:19):
might not have been issued one that said that they
were entitled to it, not that they were guaranteed to
receive it. This caused problems at the ports, as officials
had to work out whether people really were legally allowed
to enter the US. These cases often wound up in court.
The collector of the Port of San Francisco claimed that
of the more than twenty six hundred Chinese people allowed
(24:42):
into the US in the first fourteen months after the
Act was signed, more than a third of them had
come through the courts without a re entry certificate.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
This was a big deal.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
On January twenty sixth, eighteen eighty four, Judge Ogden Hoffman
of the U. S. District Court for the Northern District
of Cali, California, included this statement in his ruling on
one of these cases. Quote, if the Chinese immigrants come
in the future in anything like the number in which
they have recently arrived, it will be impossible for the
(25:13):
courts to fulfill their ordinary functions. There remain on the
calendar of the District Court. I am informed one hundred
and ninety cases for five or six weeks, even with
night sessions, I have been unable to make any great
impression on them. All ordinary business, public and private of
the court is necessarily suspended or if resumed, these passengers,
(25:37):
many of who may be entitled to their discharge, are
left either in custody or on bail, awaiting the determination
of their cases. It is therefore an urgent necessity that Congress,
by committing that duty to commissioners, or by some other mode,
should relieve the courts of the burden of passing on
(25:58):
these cases.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
To close these legal loopholes. On July third, eighteen eighty four,
the US government broadened the Chinese Exclusion Act, making those
re entry certificates issued at port the only evidence that
could establish a person's right to re enter the United States.
But this expansion didn't make any provision for people who
had left the US before it was passed. This led
(26:21):
to a Supreme Court case involving Chiu Hung, who had
left the US for Hawaii in eighteen eighty one and
had tried to return to the US in eighteen eighty four.
In this case, Hung was allowed to enter the US
because the Court found that the law had not intended
to strip people of rights they had previously had under
the treaty, which included being able to come and go.
(26:44):
Justice Stephenfield who will come up again. Dissented with this ruling,
arguing that it was quote wholly immaterial to inquire whether
by the act assailed it has departed from the treaty
or not, or whether such departure was accidental or designed, and,
if the last, whether the reasons therefore were good or bad.
During the oral arguments, Field had also said, quote, Congress
(27:06):
never supposed that Chinamen intended to go back to China
and stay several years. If they do not come back
at once, they should not be allowed to come at all.
We're going to get into Chai chung Ping's case after
we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
As we said earlier, Chai chan Ping traveled into the
United States from China in eighteen eighty seven, and he
worked in the US for the next twelve years. Beyond that,
we don't know a lot about him. I have a
lot of unanswered questions, specifically about his name, Like I
don't know how his name was written in Chinese characters
and how that was romanized, because the romanization methods that
(27:51):
exist today like had not really been developed yet when
he immigrated. There are just some question marks about how
he would have written or said his own name. On
June second, eighteen eighty seven, he set sail for China
aboard the steamship Gaelic for a visit. Before the ship
left the port, he got the required certificate that would
(28:14):
allow him to re enter the United States when he
got back. On September seventh, eighteen eighty eight, he set
sail from Hong Kong aboard the Belgic that was a
British vessel that was under charter to an American company,
and it was bound for San Francisco. The Supreme Court's
decision in his case says that he arrived in San
Francisco on October eighth, but newspaper reports about the vessel's
(28:38):
arrival say that it was on the seventh. However, on
October first, eighteen eighty eight, while he was still in transit,
President Grover Cleveland signed the Scott Act into law, and
the Scott Act barred re entry for Chinese immigrants to
the US, no matter when they first arrived in or
how long they had lived in the country. The US
(28:59):
and China had been working on yet another treaty. This time,
China had proposed that it curtail immigration to the US
with the hopes that it would ultimately protect its citizens
who were in the United States, but the resulting treaty
banned immigration to the US for twenty years and the
return of Chinese workers to the US. This led to
(29:20):
a huge outcry, and China refused to ratify the treaty,
so the US acted unilaterally and put the same basic
provisions in place with the Scott Act. Yeah, at this point,
China really had no confidence that the United States was
willing or able to protect Chinese citizens who were living
on American soil. The Scott Acts made that reentry certificate
(29:44):
that Chai Chanping had obtained before leaving the United States invalid,
and he was not at all unique in this situation.
Even though only a few of these cases made it
all the way to the Supreme Court, It's estimated that
the Scott Act invalidated the re entry permits of as
many as twenty thousand Chinese people, and that as many
(30:05):
as six hundred of them were in transit to the
United States when it was passed. Just in terms of
the passengers aboard the Belgic there were one hundred and
seventy six people from China, all of whom were kept
there confined to the ship under guard by port officials.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Attorneys began filing petitions on behalf of those one hundred
and seventy six people, some of them arguing that they
had technically been under US jurisdiction before the Scott Act
was signed, since the Belgic was operating under an American charter.
A petition for Chai chan Ping was filed on October tenth,
and he was issued a writ of habeas corpus.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Chai Chanping's hearing was before the Circuit Court of the
United States for the Northern District of California, and the
judge ruled that his detention aboard the Belgic was legal.
Because of the Scott Act, he had no legal right
to enter the United States anymore, but his ane argued
that this was in violation of existing treaties between the
(31:04):
United States and China, including the Berlin Game Treaty. His
appeal went to the Supreme Court, where it was argued
on March twenty eighth and twenty ninth of eighteen eighty nine.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution is worded as
applying to persons, not citizens, so a person cannot be
deprived of life liberty or property without due process of law.
(31:26):
Chai chan Ping's attorneys made an argument that his right
to re enter the US was effectively property and that
he could not be stripped of it without due process.
They also reiterated the idea that his exclusion from the
US ran against existing treaties with China. However, the Supreme
Court was unanimous in its decision, which was issued on
(31:47):
May thirteenth, that Chai chan Ping did not have the
right to re enter the United States, regardless of what
the treaties in place between the US and China actually said.
In terms of federal law and international treaties. The Court
ruled that neither of them had automatic precedence over the other,
so whichever one was the most recent was the one
(32:09):
that applied to the situation. But the Court also went
way beyond answering just this one specific question. Stephen Johnson Field,
writing for the majority, wrote, quote, to preserve its independence
and give security against foreign aggression and encroachment is the
highest duty of every nation, and to attain these ends,
nearly all other considerations are to be subordinated. It matters
(32:33):
not in what form such aggression and encroachment come, whether
from the foreign nation acting in its national character, or
from vast hordes of its people crowding in upon us.
The Court's opinion was also pretty broad in how it
approached the idea of race and assimilation.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
If therefore, the Government of the United States, through its
Legislative Department, considers the presence of foreigners of a diff
race in this country who will not assimilate with us
to be dangerous to its peace and security, their exclusion
is not to be stayed because at the time there
are no actual hostilities with the nation of which the
(33:13):
foreigners are subjects.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
This opinion also framed restrictions on immigration, even if discriminatory,
as a fundamental part of a nation's sovereignty. Quote, the
power of exclusion of foreigners being an incident of sovereignty
belonging to the Government of the United States, as a
part of those sovereign powers delegated by the Constitution, the
right to its exercise at any time when, in the
(33:38):
judgment of the government, the interests of the country require.
It cannot be granted away or restrained on behalf of
any one.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Today, chat Chanping versus the United States is often referred
to as the Chinese Exclusion case, although sometimes that's also
grouped in with three later cases and they become the
Chinese Exclusion cases together as a group. And although these
decisions have been highly criticized, especially in recent years, they
(34:06):
have never been overturned. As we said at the top
of the show. Together they have formed the foundation for
the plenary power doctrine in the context of United States
immigration law. Basically, people trying to enter the US aren't citizens,
so constitutional protections against discrimination don't apply to them. And
although persons already in the United States are covered under
(34:30):
parts of the Fourteenth Amendment, specifically the guarantee of Due Process,
persons not already in the United States really aren't. So
through these rulings, the Supreme Court took a position that
the President and Congress are responsible for immigration law, not
the courts, and not without much court oversight. As for
(34:51):
Chai chan Ping, we know he was forced to go
back to China, but that didn't happen for a few
more months. His case had become national news thanks to
its potential impact on the Chinese Exclusion Act, and for
weeks after the Supreme Court issued its ruling, there were
headlines claiming that no one knew where he was. On
June twenty third, one of his attorneys gave a statement
(35:12):
to the San Francisco Examiner that he would let the
Federal Marshall know when his client was ready to set sail,
and that it wasn't unusual for it to take up
to thirty days for a person to get their affairs
in order and be ready to leave, even though he
was essentially being deported at this point, Like none of
the language around this case is framed as deportation. It's
(35:34):
excluding him from entering the US, even though he had
been released on bond and was already in the US.
In August of eighteen eighty nine, his bondsman agreed to
bring him to the Port to board the Arabic, which
was scheduled to depart for China on the twenty second
of that month. It seems to have actually set sail
a few days after that, according to a write up
(35:55):
in The New York Times, which is really insulting in
its tone, So I kind of take this with a
grain of salt. He refused to pay for his passage
because he did not want to leave the United States
in the first place. There were people who came to
the US from China while the Chinese Exclusion Act was enforced.
This was particularly true after the nineteen oh six earthquake
(36:15):
and fire destroyed most of San Francisco's public records, so
people forged documents to claim that they had been born
in the US or that they were related to US citizens.
People who entered the US through this kind of forged
paperwork became known as paper sons. So it's possible that
Chai chan Ping returned to the US, but it is
assumed that he spent the rest of his life in China. Yeah,
(36:38):
we don't really know a lot about what happened to
him after this point. We don't know a lot about
him as a person in general, but we do know
that his case had just a monumental influence on how
the courts have continued to view immigration law in the
United States and by extension, like how lawmakers make immigration policy,
(37:00):
knowing that the plenary power doctrine is the long standing
president at this point. Thanks so much for joining us
on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note,
our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and
you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app,
(37:22):
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday. Coming up, we have an episode that's related
to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the history of immigration
from China to the United States. We've talked about a
lot of the background and context for this before on
a number of different episodes, including the one on the
US Supreme Court decision in Chai Chong Ping versus the
(00:23):
United States.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
This episode came out on April nineteenth, twenty twenty one,
and it is two days Saturday Classic Welcome to Stuff
You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Hello, and Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
We've gotten several requests to do an episode on the
Chinese Exclusion Act of eighteen eighty two, and that's something
that we've mentioned in I feel like a lot of
previous episodes, and it's gotten a longer discussion in some
specific episodes like the Delano Grape Strike and Cannery Row
and our Brief History of Foreign Foods in the US,
(01:09):
and then especially our two parter on Executive Order ninety
sixty six in the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during
World War Two.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
So the Chinese.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Exclusion Act was really the first big piece in just
a long history of United States immigration laws, intended to
keep so called undesirables out of the country and to
maintain white racial purity. It was the United States first
major immigration law, and as its name suggests, it specifically
(01:40):
targeted people from China. It made it illegal for Chinese
laborers to enter the US for ten years, and then
it was extended under the Geary Act in eighteen ninety
two and then made permanent in nineteen o two. It
wasn't repealed until nineteen forty three. That was under the
Magnuson Act, although that act also set a quote on
(02:00):
Chinese immigration that worked out to a maximum of just
about one hundred and five people a year, so not
many at all. But the Chinese Exclusion Act also had
a much broader impact beyond its exclusion of Chinese immigrants
and beyond its setting the foundation for later laws that
targeted other groups. When it was challenged before the Supreme Court,
(02:22):
the court's decisions established what's known as the plenary power
doctrine for immigration law. Basically, that's the idea that the
US government's legislative and executive branches have virtually unlimited authority
to regulate immigration without a lot of oversight from the courts,
even if those same regulations would be considered discriminatory if
(02:43):
they were applied to US citizens. So today we are
going to talk about the Chinese Exclusion Act. We're also
going to talk about the Supreme Court case that's most
closely associated with all this, and that is Chai Chan
Ping versus the United States.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
For the most part, immigration in the US from China
started after the end of the First Opium War. Briefly,
Britain wanted to import Chinese goods like tea and silk,
but China didn't really have a need for Britain's usual exports,
so to offset that imbalance, Britain started trading opium from
India into Southern China. Opium, of course, is a highly
(03:22):
addictive narcotic, and although it had been introduced into China
before this point, the British opium trade was socially and
economically devastating. The emperors started issuing edicts against opium in
seventeen twenty nine, but Britain kept exporting it into China
in defiance of Chinese law. Eventually, China destroyed a shipment
(03:43):
of British opium by throwing it into the sea, and
Britain retaliated with force. The resulting war lasted from eighteen
thirty nine to eighteen forty two, and it ended with
the Treaty of Nanjing, which heavily favored British interests. Although
the US had all also been involved in the opium trade,
it wasn't one of the belligerents in this war, so
(04:04):
it was not a party to the Treaty of Nanjing.
But the US did want access to the same trading
ports and other concessions that Britain had secured through that treaty,
so US President John Tyler sent a delegation to China
in eighteen forty four, and the result was the Treaty
of wan Hia, which was described as a Treaty of quote, Peace, amity,
(04:26):
and commerce. It called for a quote perfect, permanent and
universal peace and a sincere and cordial amity between the
US and China. It was the first diplomatic agreement between
the US and China, and although it primarily covered US
trading rights with China, it also established the right for
Americans to live in five specific Chinese ports. The Treaties
(04:49):
of Nanjing and wan Chia are two of the unequal
treaties that China signed with other nations in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. These treaties heavily favored the interests
of other nations over those of China. China had strictly
limited its trade and its contact with other nations before
this point, and so it went through just massive and
(05:10):
tumultuous social and economic changes as a result of these
treaties and the concessions that they granted to other nations.
On top of that, the Taiping Rebellion was partially fueled
by this upheaval and dissatisfaction over these new foreign influences
in China. It started in eighteen fifty and led to
the deaths of more than twenty million people. Then, unresolved
(05:34):
issues from the First Opium War fed into the Second
Opium War that started in eighteen fifty six. There were
massive floods and famines in China in the mid nineteenth
century as well.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
In the wake of all this violence and chaos and destruction,
people understandably started emigrating from China to other countries, and
while some people were able to pay their own way,
others were essentially indentured workers, or in some cases, were
the victims of trafficking. During these same years, the United
States needed a new source for laborers, especially in California.
(06:09):
The US took possession of nearly all of what is
now California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico after the
end of the Mexican American War in eighteen forty eight.
That same year, the discovery of gold launched the California
Gold Rush, So the US needed people to farm this
newly acquired land, to mine gold, to build infrastructure, just
(06:31):
on and on.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
They needed people.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, and just from a practical but also unpleasant level,
people were going to have to come from somewhere else.
The indigenous population of California is estimated to have been
at about one hundred and fifty thousand people at the
end of the Mexican American War, and they faced disease,
the loss of land, and genocide at the hands of
(06:54):
white settlers in the California government over the following decades.
And although some newcomers to Cali, California did bring their
enslaved workforces with them. When California was admitted to the
Union in eighteen fifty it was as a free state,
so the United States was just needing to bring in
workers from some other source. One of the people proposing
(07:15):
that these new laborers come from China was Aaron Haate
Palmer his memoir Geographical, Political, and Commercial On the present state,
productive Resources and Capabilities for Commerce of Siberia, Manchuria, and
the Asiatic Islands of the Northern Pacific Ocean, and on
the importance of opening commercial intercourse with those countries we
(07:36):
love A long title. That book was addressed to President
James K. Polk in eighteen forty eight. In addition to
summarizing quote, the present state, productive resources and capabilities for
commerce of several comparatively unknown countries in the East, the
eighth chapter of this work was titled quote Policy of
Encouraging Immigration of Chinese Agricultural Laborers to California semi colon
(08:02):
railroad from the Mississippi to the Bay of San Francisco.
This chapter began quote with the view of bringing the
fertile lands in California under early cultivation. I would suggest
the policy of encouraging immigration of agricultural laborers from China
to that territory. No people in all the East are
so well adapted for clearing wild lands and raising every
(08:25):
species of agricultural product, especially rice, cotton, tobacco, sugar, and
silk as the Chinese. Palmer goes on to describe how
a colony of Chinese laborers in California would also bring
in trade from China and from other parts of Asia.
He also advocates the construction of a railroad connecting the
Mississippi River to San Francisco, which would connect the eastern
(08:48):
US to the West coast for trade with Asia. The
United States would undertake such a railroad under the Pacific
Railway Act, which was signed into law in eighteen sixty two.
As a side here, Palmer would also go on to
draft such documents as Plan for Opening Japan, which formed
the foundation for commodore Matthew Perry's voyage to open Japan
(09:10):
to Western trade by force. Palmer petitioned Congress for compensation
and recognition for his work. He was apparently very annoyed
that he had not been recognized or paid for all
of this. That led to an Act for the Relief
of Aaron H. Palmer in eighteen sixty one, and under
that act he was paid three thousand dollars. In the
(09:32):
wake of all this, the number of Chinese people living
in the US rose dramatically. In eighteen forty, there were
four people of Chinese origin known to be living in
the United States. In eighteen fifty, there were just over
four thousand, but by eighteen sixty that number had grown
to almost thirty five thousand. That's a big number in
it sounds like a huge increase, and it is, but
(09:54):
it's still tiny compared to the total US population of
thirty one million people at the time. So at the
national level, looking at things from the federal government's perspective,
these were desperately needed, relatively inexpensive workers who were doing
critical manual labor. Some of that labor was incredibly difficult, unpleasant,
and dangerous. That was especially true as Chinese workers started
(10:18):
building the Transcontinental Railroad. They made up between eighty and
ninety percent of the workforce on the railroad's western portion.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
But locally, white people in the Western US, especially in California,
saw Chinese immigrants as a threat. This was especially true
during the Gold Rush, as white miners tried to exclude
Chinese people from mining camps and prevent Chinese people from
staking claims. Basically, as soon as Chinese immigrants started branching
(10:47):
out beyond doing manual labor, white people resisted. We will
get into more about that. After a quick sponsor break
during the eighteen fifties and sixties, the state of California
(11:07):
started really trying to discourage immigration from China and to
place restrictions on Chinese people who were already in the state.
In eighteen fifty four, the California Supreme Court issued its
decision in People Versus Hall, which ruled that Chinese people
could not testify against white people in court. The language
(11:27):
of the court's ruling was explicitly racist, including describing Chinese
people as inferior. In eighteen fifty eight, California passed a
law that barred Chinese and Mongolian people from entering the state,
where generally there were also just the same kinds of
discriminatory segregation laws that we've seen in other contexts, and
laws that were just applied only to the Chinese population
(11:50):
and not to everyone else. At the same time, the
United States was signing new treaties with China. In eighteen
fifty eight, the US and China signed the Treaty of
Chen which supplemented and revised the Treaty of Juan Chia.
The Treaty of Tianjin again emphasized this idea of establishing
a quote firm, lasting, and sincere friendship between the two nations.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
The Treaties of Tianjin and Wan Chia both outlined various
rights and protections for American citizens who were living in China,
but they didn't really do the same for Chinese citizens
who were living in the United States, or really mentioned
Chinese immigration to the US at all. That changed with
the Berlin Game Seward Treaty of eighteen sixty eight that
(12:36):
was named for US Minister to China andson Burlingame, who
had started working directly for the Chinese government, and for
Secretary of State William Seward. In addition to again reiterating
and expanding American trading rights with China, this treaty also
specified that both Chinese and American citizens had a quote
inherent and unalienable right to change their home and allegiance.
(13:00):
In other words, Americans could immigrate to China and Chinese
people could immigrate to the US without restriction. At the
same time, quote nothing herein contained shall be held to
confer naturalization upon citizens of the US in China, nor
upon the subjects of China in the United States. US
citizens could also enjoy all the privileges of a public
(13:23):
education under control of the Chinese government, and Chinese citizens
could do the same in the US. Chinese and American
citizens were each allowed to establish their own schools in
the other country as well. But even as the federal
government was establishing this pretty unrestricted right to emigrate between
China and the United States, discrimination against Chinese people already
(13:47):
in the United States was really increasing. The same types
of racist stereotyping that had been used to justify slavery
was used to justify discrimination and violence against Chinese immigrants.
Men were described as being useful only for manual labor,
while Chinese women were cast as sex workers. Compounding all
(14:08):
of this were perceptions that Chinese people would work for
such low wages that they made it impossible for white
people to compete. Employers also started bringing in Chinese workers
to break strikes, and that drew the ire of the
workers they were replacing and the unions that represented them,
and the language used to describe Chinese workers often carried
(14:30):
a connotation of damage and destruction. These immigrants were described
as an invasion, or a flood, or a deluge, or
even a plague of locusts. The idea was that once
the railroad was finished, or the mine was played out,
or the crop was brought in, then these workers would
swarm into another area and destroy everything in their path.
(14:51):
This was worsened by the Panic of eighteen seventy three,
which kicked off a financial depression and also led to
increased competition for fewer and fewer jobs. White communities and
business leaders along the West Coast, especially in California, started
pressing the federal government to take action against this supposed
Chinese threat. In eighteen seventy five, less than a decade
(15:15):
after signing the Berlin Game Treaty, the federal government responded
to this with the Page Act.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
The Page Act barred US citizens from bringing quote any
subject of China, Japan, or any Oriental country into the
US without their free and voluntary consent. In other words,
it banned Americans from bringing indentured or otherwise unfree workers
to the US from these countries. Section three of the
Page Act also began quote the importation into the United
(15:44):
States of women for the purposes of prostitution is hereby forbidden,
and it empowered port collectors to inspect vessels and their
passengers to confirm that this law was being followed.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
The Page Act essentially assumed that Asian women immigrating to
the US world sex workers, and it subjected them to
degrading and humiliating exams and interrogations upon arrival. Before this point,
Chinese immigrants to the US had been predominantly male, since
so many were being contracted to work as manual laborers.
(16:18):
But the Page Act became an even bigger deterrent for women,
and it reinforced stereotypes that connected Asian women to sex work.
Combined with a rise in anti miscegenation laws which made
it illegal for people of different races to marry, this
meant that the vast majority of Chinese people in the
US were single men or men whose families were back
(16:39):
in China. Was basically a deterrent to forming actual families
and communities here in the US. We talked about some
similar stuff in our Delano Grape Strike episode with Filipino
workers who were not permitted to have wives or to
bring their wives from the Philippines. Yeah eighteen seventy five
(17:02):
was also the year that Chai chan Ping arrived in
the US to work, and he worked in the United
States for the next twelve years, and during those years,
the US continued to pass new restrictions on immigration from
China and other parts of Asia, and on Chinese immigrants
already in the country. California adopted a new state constitution
in eighteen seventy nine, which included Article nineteen. It was
(17:25):
simply called Chinese. Section two of this article began, quote,
no corporation, now existing or hereafter formed under the laws
of this State shall, after the adoption of this Constitution, employed,
directly or indirectly, in any capacity any Chinese or Mongolian.
Section three reads in its entirety quote no Chinese shall
(17:48):
be employed on any state, county, municipal, or other public work,
except in punishment for crime. Also in eighteen seventy nine,
the US Senate and House asked a bill that mandated
that ships arriving in the United States could carry no
more than fifteen Chinese workers. President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed
(18:10):
this bill because it conflicted with the treaties in place
with China, including the Berlin Game Treaty, but then to
address that he sent a commission to China, headed by
diplomat James Angel, to negotiate a new treaty, and the
result of that negotiation was the Angel Treaty, signed in
eighteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
The Angel Treaty was written to apply only to laborers,
although the definition of laborer expanded over time. It read
in part quote, Whenever, in the opinion of the Government
of the United States, the coming of Chinese laborers to
the United States or their residents therein effects or threatens
to affect the interests of that country, or to endanger
(18:50):
the good order of the said country, or of any
locality within the territory thereof, the Government of China agrees
that the Government of the United States may regulate, limit,
or suspend such coming or residence, but may not absolutely
prohibit it. This treaty's second article declared that quote Chinese subjects,
(19:11):
whether proceeding to the United States as teachers, students, merchants,
or from curiosity, together with their body and household servants
and Chinese laborers, who are now in the United States,
shall be allowed to go and come of their own
free will and accord, and shall be accorded all the
rights privileges, immunities, and exemptions which are accorded to the
(19:33):
citizens and.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Subjects of the most favored nation. However, just two years
after signing the Angel Treaty, the United States passed the
Chinese Exclusion Act, or as it was formally known, an
Act to execute certain Treaty stipulations relating to Chinese. It
banned Chinese laborers from coming to the US for ten years,
(19:55):
and it defined laborers as quote both skilled and unskilled
laborers and Chinese employed in mining. And it also included
this clause, no state court or court of the United
States shall admit Chinese to citizenship. Now, you could make
the argument that because this applied only to laborers, it
(20:18):
was not absolutely prohibiting people from coming from China to
the United States, which is like the Angel Treaty had
said that the US could limit but not absolutely prohibit.
That's still kind of like well, technically level of argument.
This Act did not apply to Chinese people who were
already in the US before the Angel Treaty was signed,
(20:40):
or to people who arrived within ninety days of the
passage of the Exclusion Act, at least in terms of
the ability to come and go. The fact that they
then could not become citizens. That applied to everyone, and
this established a process to take place at American ports
which would document the right of these people who you know,
were exempt under this part of the treaty to come
(21:01):
and go. The customs collector would document all Chinese passengers
on departing vessels, and then these passengers were entitled to
receive a certificate that would quote entitle the Chinese laborer
to whom the same is issued to return to and
re enter the United States, upon producing and delivering the
same to the Collector of Customs of the district at
(21:24):
which such Chinese laborer shall seek to re enter. So basically,
if you're already here, you were supposed to be able
to come and go. You could return to China or
go somewhere else and then come back in the United States.
In practice, this act banned virtually all immigration to the
US from China, and it also sparked a massive amount
of horrific anti Chinese violence in the US. There had
(21:48):
been mass anti Chinese violence before this point. As one example,
on October twenty fourth, eighteen seventy one, a white man
was killed during a shootout involving several Chinese men, and
in retaliation, a white mob attacked the Chinese community of
Los Angeles, lynching at least seventeen people. But after the
Exclusion Act was passed, White communities on the West Coast
(22:11):
felt empowered to purge their Chinese populations, and they subjected
Chinese neighborhoods to riots and other mass violence. Multiple cities
and towns expelled their entire Chinese population, including Tacoma, Washington,
which force marched its remaining Chinese residents out of town
on November third, eighteen eighty five. At least twenty eight
(22:34):
Chinese men were massacred in Rock Springs, Wyoming, on September
thirtieth of eighteen eighty five. This whole period came to
be known as the Driving Out, and it really had
a lot of similarities to the mass violence against black
communities that we've talked about in previous episodes, including our
episode on the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen. There was
(22:55):
a widespread perception outside of the Chinese community that Chinese
immigrants were ignorant and illiterate, but really the Chinese immigrant
community in the US was deeply interconnected, organized, and legally
very savvy. Chinese benevolent and mutual aid associations had started
to form in the US almost as soon as Chinese
(23:16):
immigrants had started arriving. In eighteen eighty two, the sixth
most powerful formed the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, also known
as the Chinese Six Companies. Its leadership included Chinese merchants
and other wealthy and prominent people, and it kept attorneys
on retainer to deal with legal issues that involved Chinese immigrants,
(23:38):
so did the Chinese Consulate. This led to a huge
number of court cases as people started arriving from China
and to the United States without that certificate that was
described under the Chinese Exclusion Act that would guarantee them
the right to return. In some cases, this was because
they were really newer rivals. They hadn't been in the
(23:58):
United States before. There were plenty of reasons that people
might really be returning to the US having left previously,
but without the right paperwork to prove that they had
previously been in the country. They could have left the
United States before the Exclusion Act was passed, at which
point no such certificates were being issued, or they just
(24:19):
might not have been issued one that said that they
were entitled to it, not that they were guaranteed to
receive it. This caused problems at the ports, as officials
had to work out whether people really were legally allowed
to enter the US. These cases often wound up in court.
The collector of the Port of San Francisco claimed that
of the more than twenty six hundred Chinese people allowed
(24:42):
into the US in the first fourteen months after the
Act was signed, more than a third of them had
come through the courts without a re entry certificate.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
This was a big deal.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
On January twenty sixth, eighteen eighty four, Judge Ogden Hoffman
of the U. S. District Court for the Northern District
of Cali, California, included this statement in his ruling on
one of these cases. Quote, if the Chinese immigrants come
in the future in anything like the number in which
they have recently arrived, it will be impossible for the
(25:13):
courts to fulfill their ordinary functions. There remain on the
calendar of the District Court. I am informed one hundred
and ninety cases for five or six weeks, even with
night sessions, I have been unable to make any great
impression on them. All ordinary business, public and private of
the court is necessarily suspended or if resumed, these passengers,
(25:37):
many of who may be entitled to their discharge, are
left either in custody or on bail, awaiting the determination
of their cases. It is therefore an urgent necessity that Congress,
by committing that duty to commissioners, or by some other mode,
should relieve the courts of the burden of passing on
(25:58):
these cases.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
To close these legal loopholes. On July third, eighteen eighty four,
the US government broadened the Chinese Exclusion Act, making those
re entry certificates issued at port the only evidence that
could establish a person's right to re enter the United States.
But this expansion didn't make any provision for people who
had left the US before it was passed. This led
(26:21):
to a Supreme Court case involving Chiu Hung, who had
left the US for Hawaii in eighteen eighty one and
had tried to return to the US in eighteen eighty four.
In this case, Hung was allowed to enter the US
because the Court found that the law had not intended
to strip people of rights they had previously had under
the treaty, which included being able to come and go.
(26:44):
Justice Stephenfield who will come up again. Dissented with this ruling,
arguing that it was quote wholly immaterial to inquire whether
by the act assailed it has departed from the treaty
or not, or whether such departure was accidental or designed, and,
if the last, whether the reasons therefore were good or bad.
During the oral arguments, Field had also said, quote, Congress
(27:06):
never supposed that Chinamen intended to go back to China
and stay several years. If they do not come back
at once, they should not be allowed to come at all.
We're going to get into Chai chung Ping's case after
we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
As we said earlier, Chai chan Ping traveled into the
United States from China in eighteen eighty seven, and he
worked in the US for the next twelve years. Beyond that,
we don't know a lot about him. I have a
lot of unanswered questions, specifically about his name, Like I
don't know how his name was written in Chinese characters
and how that was romanized, because the romanization methods that
(27:51):
exist today like had not really been developed yet when
he immigrated. There are just some question marks about how
he would have written or said his own name. On
June second, eighteen eighty seven, he set sail for China
aboard the steamship Gaelic for a visit. Before the ship
left the port, he got the required certificate that would
(28:14):
allow him to re enter the United States when he
got back. On September seventh, eighteen eighty eight, he set
sail from Hong Kong aboard the Belgic that was a
British vessel that was under charter to an American company,
and it was bound for San Francisco. The Supreme Court's
decision in his case says that he arrived in San
Francisco on October eighth, but newspaper reports about the vessel's
(28:38):
arrival say that it was on the seventh. However, on
October first, eighteen eighty eight, while he was still in transit,
President Grover Cleveland signed the Scott Act into law, and
the Scott Act barred re entry for Chinese immigrants to
the US, no matter when they first arrived in or
how long they had lived in the country. The US
(28:59):
and China had been working on yet another treaty. This time,
China had proposed that it curtail immigration to the US
with the hopes that it would ultimately protect its citizens
who were in the United States, but the resulting treaty
banned immigration to the US for twenty years and the
return of Chinese workers to the US. This led to
(29:20):
a huge outcry, and China refused to ratify the treaty,
so the US acted unilaterally and put the same basic
provisions in place with the Scott Act. Yeah, at this point,
China really had no confidence that the United States was
willing or able to protect Chinese citizens who were living
on American soil. The Scott Acts made that reentry certificate
(29:44):
that Chai Chanping had obtained before leaving the United States invalid,
and he was not at all unique in this situation.
Even though only a few of these cases made it
all the way to the Supreme Court, It's estimated that
the Scott Act invalidated the re entry permits of as
many as twenty thousand Chinese people, and that as many
(30:05):
as six hundred of them were in transit to the
United States when it was passed. Just in terms of
the passengers aboard the Belgic there were one hundred and
seventy six people from China, all of whom were kept
there confined to the ship under guard by port officials.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Attorneys began filing petitions on behalf of those one hundred
and seventy six people, some of them arguing that they
had technically been under US jurisdiction before the Scott Act
was signed, since the Belgic was operating under an American charter.
A petition for Chai chan Ping was filed on October tenth,
and he was issued a writ of habeas corpus.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Chai Chanping's hearing was before the Circuit Court of the
United States for the Northern District of California, and the
judge ruled that his detention aboard the Belgic was legal.
Because of the Scott Act, he had no legal right
to enter the United States anymore, but his ane argued
that this was in violation of existing treaties between the
(31:04):
United States and China, including the Berlin Game Treaty. His
appeal went to the Supreme Court, where it was argued
on March twenty eighth and twenty ninth of eighteen eighty nine.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution is worded as
applying to persons, not citizens, so a person cannot be
deprived of life liberty or property without due process of law.
(31:26):
Chai chan Ping's attorneys made an argument that his right
to re enter the US was effectively property and that
he could not be stripped of it without due process.
They also reiterated the idea that his exclusion from the
US ran against existing treaties with China. However, the Supreme
Court was unanimous in its decision, which was issued on
(31:47):
May thirteenth, that Chai chan Ping did not have the
right to re enter the United States, regardless of what
the treaties in place between the US and China actually said.
In terms of federal law and international treaties. The Court
ruled that neither of them had automatic precedence over the other,
so whichever one was the most recent was the one
(32:09):
that applied to the situation. But the Court also went
way beyond answering just this one specific question. Stephen Johnson Field,
writing for the majority, wrote, quote, to preserve its independence
and give security against foreign aggression and encroachment is the
highest duty of every nation, and to attain these ends,
nearly all other considerations are to be subordinated. It matters
(32:33):
not in what form such aggression and encroachment come, whether
from the foreign nation acting in its national character, or
from vast hordes of its people crowding in upon us.
The Court's opinion was also pretty broad in how it
approached the idea of race and assimilation.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
If therefore, the Government of the United States, through its
Legislative Department, considers the presence of foreigners of a diff
race in this country who will not assimilate with us
to be dangerous to its peace and security, their exclusion
is not to be stayed because at the time there
are no actual hostilities with the nation of which the
(33:13):
foreigners are subjects.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
This opinion also framed restrictions on immigration, even if discriminatory,
as a fundamental part of a nation's sovereignty. Quote, the
power of exclusion of foreigners being an incident of sovereignty
belonging to the Government of the United States, as a
part of those sovereign powers delegated by the Constitution, the
right to its exercise at any time when, in the
(33:38):
judgment of the government, the interests of the country require.
It cannot be granted away or restrained on behalf of
any one.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Today, chat Chanping versus the United States is often referred
to as the Chinese Exclusion case, although sometimes that's also
grouped in with three later cases and they become the
Chinese Exclusion cases together as a group. And although these
decisions have been highly criticized, especially in recent years, they
(34:06):
have never been overturned. As we said at the top
of the show. Together they have formed the foundation for
the plenary power doctrine in the context of United States
immigration law. Basically, people trying to enter the US aren't citizens,
so constitutional protections against discrimination don't apply to them. And
although persons already in the United States are covered under
(34:30):
parts of the Fourteenth Amendment, specifically the guarantee of Due Process,
persons not already in the United States really aren't. So
through these rulings, the Supreme Court took a position that
the President and Congress are responsible for immigration law, not
the courts, and not without much court oversight. As for
(34:51):
Chai chan Ping, we know he was forced to go
back to China, but that didn't happen for a few
more months. His case had become national news thanks to
its potential impact on the Chinese Exclusion Act, and for
weeks after the Supreme Court issued its ruling, there were
headlines claiming that no one knew where he was. On
June twenty third, one of his attorneys gave a statement
(35:12):
to the San Francisco Examiner that he would let the
Federal Marshall know when his client was ready to set sail,
and that it wasn't unusual for it to take up
to thirty days for a person to get their affairs
in order and be ready to leave, even though he
was essentially being deported at this point, Like none of
the language around this case is framed as deportation. It's
(35:34):
excluding him from entering the US, even though he had
been released on bond and was already in the US.
In August of eighteen eighty nine, his bondsman agreed to
bring him to the Port to board the Arabic, which
was scheduled to depart for China on the twenty second
of that month. It seems to have actually set sail
a few days after that, according to a write up
(35:55):
in The New York Times, which is really insulting in
its tone, So I kind of take this with a
grain of salt. He refused to pay for his passage
because he did not want to leave the United States
in the first place. There were people who came to
the US from China while the Chinese Exclusion Act was enforced.
This was particularly true after the nineteen oh six earthquake
(36:15):
and fire destroyed most of San Francisco's public records, so
people forged documents to claim that they had been born
in the US or that they were related to US citizens.
People who entered the US through this kind of forged
paperwork became known as paper sons. So it's possible that
Chai chan Ping returned to the US, but it is
assumed that he spent the rest of his life in China. Yeah,
(36:38):
we don't really know a lot about what happened to
him after this point. We don't know a lot about
him as a person in general, but we do know
that his case had just a monumental influence on how
the courts have continued to view immigration law in the
United States and by extension, like how lawmakers make immigration policy,
(37:00):
knowing that the plenary power doctrine is the long standing
president at this point. Thanks so much for joining us
on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note,
our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and
you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app,
(37:22):
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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